1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to context management systems. More particularly, the invention relates to systems in which context management software is configured as a server. Yet more particularly, the invention relates to a server appliance including a standalone computer and software system, which performs context management over a network. In some aspects, the invention relates to such a server appliance, which is applicable to context management of healthcare applications.
2. Related Art
There are many businesses or fields of endeavor, which rely on the use of plural desktop computer applications. One such field is the modern practice of medicine. In such a setting, users quite often find themselves entering and reentering similar information over and over. For example, a single user may have to repeat login information in plural applications, followed by the same or similar client information. Such information that defines the environment in which each application operates is known as context. That is, context is a collection of data items and corresponding values, wherein the items represent information required in common between plural applications in an industry or business setting. For example, in health care, a patient identifier (patient ID) is an item which is part of the context in which plural clinical applications may participate, or share.
In the modern practice of medicine, a physician or other professional or staff member may need to store, retrieve, analyze, etc. various types of patient data. The patient data to be processed may be clinical; e.g. x-ray images or blood work results, or may be financial, e.g. insurance cover and billing history. Thus, clinical applications, such as those to store, retrieve and display x-ray images and those to store, retrieve and display blood work results have inputs and outputs which fall into two broad classes: highly specialized, work product specific I/O; and more general, context-related I/O.
The desirability of managing context information, so that a user at a workstation need not reenter information such as user identification (user ID) or patient identification (patient ID) has long been recognized.
A standard known as Health Level Seven Context Management Specification Version CM-1.1 was promulgated by the Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Context Object Workgroup (CCOW) on Nov. 6, 1999, incorporated herein in its entirety by reference, to define an interface and other architectural definitions of a Context Management Architecture (CMA), whereby clinical applications interact with a Context Manager to manage context information across a range of clinical and other health care related applications.
At this time, there is no other known, comprehensive context management software packages available. Some small steps have been taken for example to share context amongst one publisher's own titles, using proprietary methods absent a context manager, or to permit a user to sign onto a single application which transfers user context to plural other applications. However, no context manager handling both user and patient context is known, much less a complete system with central administration of the context management process.
A context management administrator is described in detail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/545,396, referred to above.
Context managers and context management administration software require communication from a user via a user interface. Conventional context managers and context management administrators therefore require a console or monitor and keyboard connected to the computer system on which they execute, in order for the user to communicate therewith. A context management administrator may communicate directly with one or more context managers residing on the same computer system. Alternatively, they may communicate through a network.
Likewise a context manager may execute on a computer system in common with the applications whose context is managed, or may execute on a remote computer system, communicating with the applications over a network.
A server appliance is a relatively new type of computing device. The server appliance is a network-connected server that provides a service to multiple client computers. A client requests the server to perform a specific task, such as returning a response to a database query. The server performs the task and returns the result of having performed the task back to the client.
However, unlike traditional computing servers that provide general-purpose platforms for a wide range of computing tasks, a server appliance is singular in purpose.
A server appliance contains specialized software, and possibly specialized hardware, as well, to enable it to achieve its specialized purpose. Server appliances can therefore be optimized for the specific tasks that they may be designed to perform, thereby reducing the server cost and complexity as compared to the cost and complexity of general-purpose servers.
Conventional commercially available server appliances include print server appliances, whose only function is to queue print jobs and route them to appropriate printers; web server appliances, whose only function is to host a single web site or small group of web sites; electronic mail server appliances, whose only function is to host electronic mail services; and, file server appliances, whose only function is to centrally store and retrieve computer files.
The computing hardware on which server appliances are built conventionally includes a central processing unit, memory and long term data storage, all packaged within a single unit. The unit conventionally has only a power supply input and a network input/output (I/O) port. The network I/O port may connect the server appliance to a computer network using any conventional networking hardware, including but not limited to a modem connection, an Ethernet connection, a universal serial bus (USB) connection, etc.
The user controls on a server appliance are conventionally very simple. There may be no controls at all, only a power connection and a network connection, as noted above. Alternatively, there may simply be an on/off switch.